YOUR CART

When I was a child, the standard instructions for practicing a musical instrument were to set a timer for 30 minutes and play through lesson assignments until the timer ended. Some of my students who took lessons with a different teacher before coming to me or who began through a school program tell me they received similar instructions or none at all.

I hate timers. I hate the idea of telling a child they must do a certain activity for 30 minutes or any other amount of time. The other thing that has a time limit is "Time Out." Children are accustomed to sitting in the "naughty chair" or other designated time-out spot for a set amount of time. So if you tell your child to go play an instrument for a set amount of time, it becomes "Time Out." That's not the way to nurture a love of music in a child, and it doesn't work for adults, either.

At one extreme, students don't always know what to do to fill that 30 minutes. At the other, they have more to practice than what can reasonably be accomplished in that time frame. See, 30 minutes isn't just seen as a minimum. It's also a maximum, especially if practice time has been squeezed into a tight schedule.

The most skilled musicians are generally not busy people. They don't have a lot of other activities apart from music, and if they do, it's typically limited to a non-musical job, maybe another hobby, educational goals, and family responsibilities. Children and teenagers who have a different activity every day of the week in an effort to be "well-rounded" don't have time to practice their instruments and so really aren't benefiting from music education, at least not as much as they could. I have had numerous students quit lessons because they aren't getting anywhere, and when I ask them about practice, they tell me they don't have time and then proceed to tell me all of the things that have been keeping them busy.

Practice needs to be scheduled without pressure. If you go over a few minutes, it shouldn't be a big deal. If you are finished practicing before the time is up, that shouldn't be a big deal, either. Watching the clock does nothing but distract from practice. In fact, it's really best to not have a clock in the practice space at all, but if that's not an option, make it inconvenient to check. For example, set an alarm for when you absolutely have to stop due to other plans, but then close the device in your instrument case so you aren't tempted to check it. I tell my students during lessons not to ask what time it is. The same rule should be extended to practice, too.

Pain is how your body communicates to your conscious mind that you are injured. It's not a matter of knowing when to stop because the pain has reached a certain level. If you feel pain, damage has already been done. Hopefully it is minor and you can correct your course and move on, but if something hurts, it needs to be addressed immediately.

Some pain really is to be expected, such as muscle soreness or sensitive skin where a callus has yet to develop. But at the very least, take a break. You don't make any gains in practice by pushing through pain, just like you don't get any gains by practicing while you are sick. If your mind and body are not fully engaged, you are going to make mistakes, and repeating those mistakes in the name of "practice" will lead to bad habits.

Furthermore, sometimes pain is more serious, and if you ignore it, you could do further damage that might eventually not only get in the way of playing your instrument but potentially affect your ability to do other activities. If it hurts, take a break and give yourself some basic first aid. If it still hurts in a day or two, get yourself some medical attention, and don't play again until the doctor says it's ok to do so.

Practice is important, but so is rest. Notice that I didn't post anything for Days 4 & 5? Well, I've been sick, and when you're sick, you have to take care of yourself. Practice schedules shouldn't be unreasonable, and it's ok to relax them or skip them altogether if you're not feeling up to it. It's also ok to take a vacation or to enjoy a holiday. The important thing is that you come back to it when you otherwise resume your regular routine.

If you are injured or sick enough that you can't practice for an extended period of time, find things you can do away from the instrument to continue keeping yourself mentally engaged in practice even if you can't manage it physically. Listen, study theory, go through your music with a pencil instead of with your instrument.

But whatever you do, don't practice when you are compromised. If you can't hear as well or don't have the energy and strength to maintain proper playing posture for a decent amount of time, you're going to make a lot more mistakes than if you were well, and repeating those mistakes is not going to be beneficial. Taking a break is a better choice than allowing practice mistakes to turn into bad habits.

Three days into the practice challenge, and I haven't had the opportunity to practice for as long as I would like, but I am feeling good about this daily revisiting of the idea of what practice should look like.

New assignments need to be broken down into smaller parts. You can't just charge through them from beginning to end and expect to improvements that stick. If you do, then old mistakes you thought you had gotten over will come back, especially when you are nervous, and your overall performance will be sloppy.

Sheet music is conveniently already divided into parts for us: movements, rehearsal letters, lines, measures. You can break it down as small as you need to, even if that means working on only one note, but measures are a good place to start.

Each section should then be further divided into:

Rhythm

Intonation

Articulation

Dynamics and Expression

In other words, as I say to make things simpler for my younger students:

Clap

Pizz

Air Bow

Arco

Clap and count the rhythm of each measure. Then pluck it, so you can work only on placing your fingers in the correct spot without worrying about what you should do with the bow. Some things, like trills and turns, really can't be played pizzicato. Don't worry about that. You can add them in later.

Air bowing doesn't have to be done without a violin if that makes you feel silly. You can bow on an open string instead. Alternatively, you can air bow without a bow. I have been known to hold a pen or pencil in place of a bow and mentally process bowings for the music in my head in all sorts of settings, including school, work, church - wherever I happen to be without my violin. The goal of air bowing is to make sure the bow is always going the right direction.

Arco generally means to play with the bow, but here it means so much more. It is time to add back all of the things you stripped away to simplify the music, including dynamics and any ornaments that require the bow.

Follow this process for each of your smaller sections, then start putting sections together, not at once but rather as slightly larger sections. Work your way up to playing the entire piece. Then, you can polish it, and sometimes that might mean breaking it into smaller pieces again to focus on something specific.

Whatever you do, never sacrifice rhythm in order to work on something else. The right pitch at the wrong time is still wrong.

Each of these has a purposes, and I'm going to give you an overview now. Warmups help with injury prevention and also frame your hand and prepare you to play your best for the rest of the practice session. In other words, warming up gets you in the mood. Use this time to focus both your mind and your body so that you can use the rest of your time efficiently.

Learning something new is a different process than playing something you have already practiced, even if you have strong sight-reading skills. It is important to practice what you are learning under tempo until mistakes are minimal. It is also important to break it into smaller pieces in a process called "deliberate practice," a topic on which books can and have been written. The basic concept of deliberate practice is slow repetition of short excerpts. More on that topic will come later in our practice challenge.

The final phase of practice, the review, is in my opinion the most important, to the extent that if you are having a bad day or perhaps in a season of your musical journey in which you are not learning anything new, you might decide that review is all you want and need to do. The purpose of review goes beyond refreshing your memory, although that is part of it. It's more about giving yourself a bit of a boost in musical self-esteem. When you go back and play old assignments, you will notice they aren't nearly as difficult as they used to be. You can also enjoy playing them without the pressure of performing well. Judgement is not permitted during review. It's not about how well you play but about reminding yourself while you play. Practice can be frustrating. Enjoy your instrument before you put it away so that you don't connect that frustration with the instrument itself.

It is important to have both short-term and long-term goals when learning to play an instrument. However, most long-term goals should not have deadlines. It's not possible to predict how long it will take to develop certain skills as a musician. If you have a goal piece and set a deadline for one year and then don't have the skills to play it for two or three years, then you have "failed" to meet your goal. On the other hand, if you keep that goal piece but don't set a deadline and are able to play it in three years, then you didn't fail, even though nothing changed. The way you frame that long-term goal matters because you have to be fair to yourself.

There are long-term goals that do need deadlines. For example, a child who wants to join a youth orchestra won't be young enough for youth orchestra forever and will have more time to experience youth orchestra if they get in sooner rather than later.

Short-term goals always need deadlines. If it's not reasonable to set a deadline, it needs to be a long-term goal, even if you think you can accomplish it in a relatively short time. A good example of a short-term goal is preparing for a recital date. Short-term goals can also be used as steps to achieve long-term goals, with deadlines reflecting what you can reasonably predict.

Now, let's set some goals specific to this practice challenge. The goal that might seem obvious, that of practicing every day for 30 days, is not permitted. If you miss a day early in the challenge, then you will have already failed, and that kills any motivation to continue. That's not the purpose of this challenge. The purpose is to establish a habit of practicing on a regular basis by spending 30 days focused on the idea of practice. That doesn't mean you can't miss a day. You can even plan to miss days. For example, suppose your regular routine includes a weekend break for practice. You don't need to make an exception to that for this challenge.

The long-term goal for this challenge is to establish or re-establish a habit of practice, whatever that looks like for you, and also to document it in some way.

The short-term goal is to design a practice routine that works for you. Start with the basic format I will show you, and use this challenge to learn about yourself and what you need in order to improve so you can incorporate that into your routine.

To participate, all you have to do is keep a practice journal. It doesn't matter what that practice journal looks like. It can be a traditional notebook-style journal, or something you type up on your computer, or something you document in a blog or YouTube channel. You don't have to share it, and no one is judging whether or not you complete this challenge. This is for you, to get back into the habit of regular practice after the holidays.

Meanwhile, I will be blogging about my own practice and sharing ideas that you might find helpful. So join me here on TrebleStrings.com or on Facebook or Reddit.

Archives

Categories

Treble Strings does not have either a studio or a retail location. We offer home and online lessons, only. Home lessons are available throughout Greater Kansas City. All goods sold by Treble Strings must be ordered online. Shipping is only available within the United States.